Resurrection Mall available now from Down & Out Books.
Look for the newest Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, in January, also from Down & Out Books.

One Bite at a Time

Monday, December 19, 2016

The Book was Better

Sure it was. Except
when it’s not. Some books have extraneous elements or plot holes or things that
just don’t make sense. There’s also the inconvenient fact they they’re two
distinct storytelling media. Some things that work in a novel won’t work on
screen. This is often—maybe even usually—to the novel’s advantage, but not
always. There are examples both ways, but today let’s focus on three examples
where the movie is far superior to the book and one where the film is much
different but at least as good.

The French Connection. (1971) Directed by William Friedkin.
Screenplay by Ernest Tidyman. Based on the 1969 book by Robin Moore. Oscars for
Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

What strikes one
here is how the movie captures the aura of the book while making major plot
changes. Take the famous chase scene. There’s nothing remotely close to that in
the book. No plot reason to even have it. Friedkin and Tidyman (and producer
Phillip D’Antoni) needed to show Popeye’s intense, even fanatical, focus on
this case and they didn’t have the kind of time Moore had in the book to let the
endless surveillances play out. So they took advantage of the visceral
reactions to be inspired from an action scene to describe Popeye’s obsessed character
as well in seven minutes as it is in the rest of the movie combined. (This is
the example of the movie not necessarily being better, but much different and
it still works.)

The Godfather (1972) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Screenplay by Mario Puzo and Coppola, based on Puzo’s 1969 novel. I’ve heard The Godfather described as “the best bad
book ever written.” I can’t argue with thOscars for best Picture and Best
Adapted Screenplay.

It’s actually two
books in one. We all remember the romanticized gangster story, but there’s a
loooong digression into life in Vegas that I’d call a soap opera but that’s an
insult to daytime television. The movie cuts almost all of that shit, giving us
just enough to let us know who Moe Greene is and why Michael has him shot in the
eye, which was the only part of that subplot worth paying attention to, anyway.

Jaws (1975). Directed by Steven Spielberg. Screen play by Peter Benchley and
Spielberg, from Benchley’s 1974 novel. (No Hollywood screwing around there. The
movie appeared on screens 16 months after the book dropped.) No Oscars in the
three categories we’re tracking here. Spielberg’s one failure was bringing Jaws out the same year as Cuckoo’s Nest.

The police chief’s
wife has an affair with the marine biologist in the book and it’s stultifying
to read. Absolutely not a goddamn thing worth knowing happens. Someone must
have told Benchley the book needed sex. Spielberg had the innate good sense to
know the real story was the three men on the boat that should have been bigger,
so he got his movie onto the water as quickly as possible and changed movies
forever. Not necessarily for the better in the long run, but that’s not his
fault. Jaws is a masterpiece.

L.A. Confidential (1997) Directed by Curtis Hanson. Screen
play by Brian Helgeland and Hanson, from James Ellroy’s 1990 novel. Oscar for Best
Adapted Screenplay; nominated for Best Picture and Best Director but lost both
to Titanic, which is a travesty I’ll carry
a grudge for to my dying day.

The only one of the
four where I saw the movie first. It’s damn near a perfect movie and I was like
a kid Christmas morning when I finally opened the book, which is a glorious
mess. Ellroy’s at the peak of his writing power here, but the story is out of
control. The last 30 or 40 pages are nothing more than two or three characters
at a time standing around trying to explain to each other what the fuck just
happened here, and it still doesn’t
make any sense. Helgeland and Hanson ruthlessly cut unneeded scenes, plots,
characters—whole books’ worth of shit—and pulled in little bits of the
surrounding LA Quartet novels to create one of the great crime films ever made.

Lots of ways to order Res Mall

Worst Enemies, Book 1 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Grind Joint, Book 2 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Forte 4: A Dangerous Lesson Available Now! Click the image below to purchase.

Chicago Private Investigator Nick Forte’s official task is to find out what he can about Jennifer Vandenbusch’s new suitor, who fails to measure up in the eyes of the family matriarch, Jennifer’s grandmother. This seems par for the course for Forte, as his personal life has been leading him through a series of men who treat women badly, though none nearly as badly as the Thursday Night Slasher. Forte lives on the fringes of the investigation run by his old friend Sonny Ng until elements of Forte’s case and life dovetail with the Slasher investigation, leading to Forte discovering more about the crimes—and himself—than he wanted to know.

The Man in the Window

"...we see him getting rougher, tougher and darker book by book. There are multiple twists in the end, two cool sidekicks, good action scenes and some pretty nifty Chanderlisms in this book, adding up to a perfect PI read"--Sons of Spade blog

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Nick Forte 2)

It's a kind of authorial magic that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of works as a tribute and as a story, and that neither aspect interferes in the least with the other… I can imagine this book finding its way into a class on writing crime fiction as an example of how to pay tribute to one's predecessors while at the same time writing a story that can stand on its own. It's an impressive accomplishment.--- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders, December 18, 2014

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.